Create your dream job.
夢の仕事を創ろう。
A dream job—what the hell is that?
You do what you love to do and get paid very well, you love people around you and they love you back, the employer gives you countless opportunities… If that is a dream job, there’s no such thing. At least no one would give it to you. You have to create it yourself.
What’s your definition of a dream job? How will you (or did you) create it yourself?
Manage your environment.
環境をうまく扱おう。
Your environment is a product of you.
One of famous self-help gurus said the opposite in the past; you are a product of your environment. But we all have a power to create or choose the environment around us. We tend to forget this fact because things around us—for example, a social norm, culture, your family or employer—force us to be in their environment.
Our environment either inspire us or drain us. If it doesn’t work well for you now, create a new one. Or choose a different one. Free your mind, and acknowledge the power you already have.
Find inspiration in town.
街中でひらめきを得よう。
Walking around and observing people can be a great source of inspiration, especially if you’re living in a large city.
I often visit popular retail stores and see everything around. What they sell, their pricing, their package design, demographics of people visiting the store… As I see around, many ideas come up. I also like to observe people in a crowded cafe. Nowadays quite a few people are just watching and touching the screen of their phone, but I sometimes find very interesting people there.
Most of the time, we sit on our desk and focus on getting things done. That’s perfectly fine. But when we get things done, it’s time to go out, see how this world is, and get ourselves inspired. No matter what we do, we are always connected with this world anyway.
Choose to be stronger.
より強くなることを選ぼう。
Friedrich Nietzsche puzzled us. Because his famous quote, “What doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger,” is not always true.
How about your job? If your employer or boss is not evil enough, it can make you stronger. But if you are forced to work 16 hours every day without any support, it may not kill you instantaneously, but can kill you eventually. It’s not rare here in Japan, and we call it ‘karoshi (過労死),’ meaning ‘death from overwork.’
How about alcohol and cigarettes? If you drink or smoke only occasionally, it may not kill you immediately; but if you get addicted to them, they will hurt your body and mind, and can kill you in the long run.
So we have three options:
Which one would you choose?
Have an exit plan.
撤退計画を持とう。
Successful business people are usually quite risk-averse, regardless of what they say in public. They never go all in, at least money-wise.
They are quite focused on success of their life and business, but they also know there are thousands of ways to achieve it. Therefore they never cling to one idea; they do hundreds of experiments and pick only one or two that work well. And they keep doing that until, or even after, they achieve what they wanted to achieve.
How do they choose? They have a clear guideline, or an exit plan, before doing experiments. If the outcome doesn’t meet their criteria, they will exit—no matter how they love the idea.
This is the strategy we also should apply to our personal life. No one wants to fail, but we will most likely fail if we go all in without any experiments and clear exit plan. We shouldn’t live our life like compulsive gamblers.
